Baja 1000 - A View From The Pits

Eric #33 invited me to go down to San Felipe and experience the Baja 1000 a few weeks ago, so I did.

With all the turmoil in Mexico these days I was a little apprehensive about driving down there. The last time I drove in Mexico I was about seventeen, I crossed the border in the middle of the night with a buddy on my way to Tijuana. In my trunk was least three quarts of beer. Somehow I managed to go the wrong way on the one Way Street that led you back to crossing over the border into California. On top of that I hit something that yanked one of my mufflers and tail pipe off the car. I pulled over and was in the middle of retrieving it when a Mexican policeman pulled up just as I was putting the muffler and tail pipe in the trunk with the at least three quarts of beer. (Fortunately for me there was no trunk light in my 1950 Ford) I explained what I was doing, but he was more concerned about why my car was facing the wrong direction. Being young and of nimble mind I realized at that moment I was indeed going the wrong direction and simultaneously came up with, I had just turned around to come back and pick up the muffler and tail pipe. He bought it; otherwise I might still be there.

So for this trip I loaded up on all kinds of insurance and on a Tuesday set off at 3:15 AM for what turned out to be a thirteen hour drive to San Felipe. Crossing over the border into Mexicali was no problem the only thing I had to show was proof of ownership on my bike. I think it’s pretty easy to get into Mexico, but maybe not so easy to get out. Mexicali is what I refer to as a two story town, sprawling and seemed to go on forever before I got out of town and back into the country on highway 5.

Surprisingly that highway was very good all the way down.  At the intersection of highway 5 and highway 3 there was a Military check point.

Going through one of those can take anywhere from a few minutes to what seems like a life time. The young military guys with automatic weapons with big banana clips on them are something you don’t see very often.

I was staying at Charlie’s house just outside San Felipe at a place called Pete’s Camp with Charlie, Eric and Ray. These three were part of a team of riders riding in the class 50 for motorcycles (Motorcycle riders over the age of 50) on a bike owned by Jim Disney, a tricked out Honda 450 CRFX.

Ray was a late addition to the team and road over four hundred miles pre riding his section of the course between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday dusk. His section on race day was about one hundred thirty miles.

Charlie’s section was about one hundred twenty and called the summit for obvious reasons. Eric’s was in the canyons and sand washes and about one hundred forty miles. Eric’s was probably the toughest, seems he always gets the toughest section, but all three of their sections are considered very tough, the toughest part of the course and nobody wants to ride those sections, except those guys and they love it.

Wednesday morning #33 and I were dropped off about twenty five miles south west of San Felipe where we were going to pre ride about a seventy five mile section of Eric’s one hundred forty mile section. For Eric it was his last look at the course before Friday’s race. The plan was for him and me to ride the first seventy five miles then decide if I was going (Capable) to ride the second section with him. We started out on a whooped out five mile road to get to the course. Eric stood up the whole five miles and I tried to do the same, but it wasn’t long before my thighs were screaming and I was trying to find places to sit and rest. But at forty miles an hour and an endless supply of whoops it wasn’t easy. On race day Cheryl Eric’s wife and I drove Charlie’s four wheel drive Baja beater out that same road to the Honda 8 check. I think our top speed down that road was maybe 17 MPH.  Anyway, as Eric and I are riding down this road I’m thinking “oh shit” I’m in big trouble I’m already worn out and we haven’t even gotten to the course.

The course was interesting to say the least. I’m used to riding in areas where mostly bikes are ridden, on the Baja course there are all manner of vehicles all trying to find the smoothest lines possible, so sometimes the course gets pretty wide. But the canyon walls limit just how wide you can search. For the most part all the vehicles stayed on the main course. And to help eliminate cheating the course is loaded with virtual checks, which means you have to pass through a specific area where you are electronically monitored. And those checks are placed in such a way to help keep competitors from cheating. In some of the tighter corners where you have to funnel down the course gets really rough. Some of the whoops are so big you not only have to gas it going up the whoop but down the other side as well or the front end will just bury itself. Some of the canyons we rode in were very unique and beautiful.

About twenty miles into our ride Eric was riding behind videoing me, I turned around to see where he was and when I turned back I had drifted off the course and was headed for a big bush or small tree take your pick, anyway I couldn’t avoid it and my only hope was it would give and let me ride through it, no luck. It cleaned me off the bike and I ended up in a pile. The dust hadn’t even settled yet and I could hear Eric laughing at me, after what seemed like a long time of hearing his chuckling, he finally asks are you ok, I said HELL no and laid there for a few more moments. When I finally got up I pulled up my jersey and said hey how does this look and he says, ah it’s just a scratch!

 I’d have to say after a while I started to relax and was beginning to really enjoy the ride and I wasn’t tired anymore like I was the first five miles. Somewhere around the forty mile mark it seemed that either the sand was getting deeper or, oh shit my clutch was starting to slip. It was my clutch, remember my article on the KTM 350 SFX that I made into a do it all bike, one of the things I did was put a Rekluse clutch in it. Well it got so hot because it was slipping too much, it over heated and would barely go. It was so hot when I poured water on the clutch cover it boiled and sizzled. When I took the cover off it was so hot oil vapors were coming off the clutch. After it cooled a little I adjusted the clutch so it didn’t have any slip to it. (Hindsight says I should have done that before I rode it in the desert) That’s one of the nice things about the Core EXP you can adjust it to do that. After that I wasn’t really sure if it would hold up so we made our way over to a road called Zoo road. Its named zoo after the crazies who imbibe and use that road during the race to get out to the pits and to see racers go by. It’s a twenty six mile dirt road that ends up at highway 5 just outside San Felipe. After a short while on zoo road, maybe a half mile Eric got bored and decided to pick up the rest of the course and left me to fend for myself. Fortunately the bike, or clutch did just fine and I made it back to the house, a few hours later Eric showed up.

One of the neat things about Mexico is you can ride your dirt bike anywhere and nobody cares. In fact there were lots of pre runner race cars all over and nobody said a word, the exact opposite of our anal retentive California.

Remember that “It’s just a little scratch” when I asked Eric what it looked like when I pulled up my Jersey well later that day just before we left to get some dinner my side where that little scratch was blew up big time with all the swelling and the hematoma. It eventually got about half the size of a football, fortunately it didn’t hurt too much. Everybody kept referring to it as Doug and his little Mexican baby. Speaking of food I’m picky but everywhere we ate the food was very good. San Felipe is a nice little third world country town. Wednesday night I had the pleasure of meeting most of the members of the class 60 race team. (Bike riders over sixty) Turns out if I had wanted I could have signed up and been on their race team they were short a rider. Problem with that was the little Mexican baby I was carrying on my side and the fact I’m not real comfortable in the desert and I would have had to ride in the dark in one of those real rough sections.

Thursday at 5:30 AM we all piled in two vehicles and drove over to Ensenada where all the race teams were and where the race started. All the team members needed to sign up and get their wrist bands to signify they were racers. Ensenada is another two story Mexican city, I couldn’t wait to get out of, but getting a chance to look at some of the race vehicles and bikes was well worth the six hour round trip. A six hour round trip to Ensenada can challenge your attention span there’s only so much site seeing one can do looking out the windshield at the desert, so I was asking Eric to explain the meaning of the Mexican lines painted down the middle of the highway, there were double, single and doted lines. Eric says the double lines mean don’t you dare pass, the single line is don’t pass and the dotted line go ahead and try it. But when he made passes across all three types of lines and I asked why, he says in Mexico senor these are just guide lines only. I said does the same hold true for the speed limit signs and he says yup just guide lines senor. When we left it was becoming a zoo around the hotel and race teams pits. By the time we got back to san Felipe it was dinner time, after a nice dinner everyone hit the sack, Friday was race day.

It was a strange schedule Friday AM Charlie was gone by 5:00 AM Ray was gone by 8:00 AM both headed to their spots where they would change riders Charlie would ride the summit and then hand it off to Ray who would ride his section then hand off to Eric. We (Eric, Cheryl and I) didn’t leave until about noon for the Honda 8 pits I mentioned earlier. The bike of choice for the serious race teams is the Honda 450CRFX not because it’s necessarily better but because down there parts availability is crucial and Honda has that covered. A lot of teams use JCR Honda’s team pits.

They’re manned by volunteers and are stocked with parts, tools, gas tires etc. to service teams who sign up and pay for their services. I don’t know how many Honda pits there were total. I believe they were placed about every fifty miles.

We were at Honda 8 hovered around Honda’s radios to hear the news about any of the riders they were servicing. Cell phone service is spotty out there. It amazed me they worked at all. It’s a thrill to be there when the top riders come through. The first was the team that eventually won overall the Honda 1X team. They were about two minutes ahead of the Kawasaki team who was about six minutes ahead of the second Honda team 0X.

On gas only stops they were getting them out in about ten to fifteen seconds. That included refueling, maybe goggles, and a water bottle to bite on when they left the pits and a full visual inspection of the bike by three or four guys.  If they need to change tires or riders it would take maybe a minute or less. If repairs were needed they did them. In one instance they changed tires; hand grips straightened a bent sub frame a little bit and changed a complete exhaust system in eight minutes. And these were volunteers not pros.

The team only needed to finish this race to win the championship for the year. They had won the San Felipe 250 and the Baja 500. Although beating Jim O’Neal’s team is always a goal, winning wasn’t necessary.  The time when we should have heard that Charlie had passed the bike off to Ray came and went and now the period of speculation began. A half hour, then an hour went by then the bad news came, Charlie had unloaded at speed and wadded himself and the bike. He had ridden the last eighty miles in severe pain with what he thought was broken ribs and a concussion.  It took about a half hour to make repairs before Ray took off for his stint. The race was over now it was survival time the goal now was to just finish. Ray made good time actually picked up a little time on O’Neal’s team although Ray unloaded about ten miles from the Honda 8 pits and found out several days later he had broken a bone in his wrist. By the time he got to Honda 8 and turned it over to Eric the sun was setting and they had to put the lights on. This was Eric’s first time riding with the big Baja lights on the bike. He left the pits at 4:30 PM and was due a Honda 11 at about 8:30PM or so. We didn’t have a real good feel for the time because he was starting out riding in the dark instead of having several hours of daylight as had been expected.

Cheryl, Ray and I headed back to San Felipe where we dropped Ray off at the Arches in San Felipe and we continued on to the Honda 11 pits which should take about two hours, but you never know because we had to go through the military check at the highway 5 and 3 intersection. The traffic coming into San Felipe on highway 3 was backed up at least a mile.

After we made it through the check we had another twenty five miles to the Borrego pits.

As we pulled off highway 3 and on to a dirt road to the pits it was an amazing sight. There were lights and camp fires lining the course for a half mile in either direction. The weather had been T shirt and shorts all day but as night fell the wind started blowing and it got real cold. It’s hard to describe what it looked or felt like standing in the Honda 11 pits watching and listening to all the different kinds of vehicles haul ass through the pits, the big trophy trucks were incredible. I’d say the speeds through the pits ranged anywhere from forty to eighty miles per hour and it wasn’t a freeway it was rough.

Cheryl and I huddled by a camp fire listening for any news on the 501X bike. 8:30 PM came and went and no Eric. Around 9:00 we finally get word that Eric had made it through Honda 9 pits but after a mile or so lost the lights and had to turn back to get the battery charged. At the pits they were going to change the stator but it turned out to be the wrong one.

With the battery charged Eric takes off but not long after the lights go out again. At this juncture all Eric had was a small flashlight he carried in his backpack. Needless to say it didn’t provide enough light to get out of first gear. As the hours drug on Eric was able to hitchhike or ride off of five different kinds of vehicles lights to slowly make his way to Honda 10.

Honda 11 pits were supposed to close around 10:00 or 11:00 PM, but the entire crew were willing to hang in there waiting for Eric and one other rider to show. As we waited I sat in Charlie’s Baja beater trying to stay warm. One of the windows wouldn’t roll up more than half way which allowed the howling wind to blow in. As the hours drug on most of the pits had dismantled and gone, leaving us with mostly partiers. Just about the time I would drift off someone set off some major league fireworks.

Around 12:30 AM Eric finally showed up ridding off to the side of a Quad racer for light. The pit crew immediately started working on the bike.

They changed the stator, voltage regulator, double checked all the wiring connections etc. About forty five minutes later Paul who had been sleeping in the back of Jim Disney’s van took off on the bike. Eric had been out there mostly in the dark for eight hours, not what he had in mind. We were told later that they thought Eric had made up about a half hour on Jim O’Neal’s team before the lights went out. Eric said riding at night with those big lights was much better than he thought it would be.

Eric, Cheryl and I headed back to San Felipe. We walked in the door at Charlie’s house at 2:45 AM and there sits Charlie on the sofa all propped up looking like a corpse. He was so banged up there was no way he could lie down to sleep, I’m sure he probably spent a few weeks sleeping in chairs.

Ray and his family had already taken off, headed back to California; Ray was going to ride the last Cross Country event of the year on Sunday. Eric and Cheryl left at 8:00 AM for home in Arizona; I left a few minutes later, Charlie and Marjorie were leaving at 2:30AM the next day.

On the way home I called Eric several times to find out if the bike had finished, turns out the lights only lasted about twenty five miles for Paul, so he just pulled over to the side of the course and waited until dawn. The race teams have thirty two hours to complete the course after their start time before they are classified as a DNF. The team and bike persevered and finished in thirty hours giving the team the class 50 championship.

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and would not hesitate to do it again.

Doug 21J